A blog about the shadowy world of law enforcement informants with particular focus on the story of Michigan prison inmate "White Boy Rick" Richard Wershe, Jr. His amazing story compels us to look at many aspects of this underworld of the criminal underworld.

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Sunday, June 28, 2015

One
of the first big cases of the Detroit Federal Drug Task Force of the 1980s was
the prosecution of the Johnny Curry drug gang. They took the unheard-of step of
secretly enlisting the help of a 14-year old kid to spy on the drug crew. When
the feds made their case, they dumped the kid—Richard J. Wershe, Jr.—and left
him to fend for himself. He was about to get a lesson in the politics of drug
crime and big city law enforcement.

By late winter/early spring of 1986 the relationship
between Richard Wershe, Jr.—a paid teen confidential informant—and members of
the Detroit Federal Narcotics Task Force was almost as cloudy and chilly as the
weather outside. Like so many things in the White Boy Rick saga, memories and
opinions don’t match about the reason for the waning interaction between the
narcs and their kid informant.

Richard Wershe, Jr. had been recruited by FBI agents at
age 14 to inform on the Johnny Curry drug organization. The agents enlisted his
help because he was known and trusted by the Curry brothers; Johnny, Leo and
Rudell.

Rick Wershe had grown up in a “changing neighborhood.”
That’s a code term used by politicians, social workers and do-gooders of
various kinds to say blacks had moved in to a white neighborhood.

Rick adapted to his surroundings. The kid picked up black
slang and he sounded black when he spoke. This was the early 80s, before
hip-hop and rap. If Rick Wershe were a teen today his white peers might call
him a wigger—a pejorative, insulting term for a white person who has adopted
the inner city black lingo, cultural values and lifestyle.

Thus, it’s not surprising that Rick Wershe was accepted
as a “kid from the hood” by the likes of the Curry brothers.

Wershe’s role as a white informant for the FBI against a
black, politically-connected drug gang is central to his continued imprisonment
long after the Currys and various Detroit drug gangsters have been tried,
convicted, sentenced and paroled.

It is reasonable to suspect FBI agents and Detroit cops
from the federal task force refused to help him when he was facing a major
state/local drug case because to do so the image-conscious federal agency would
have had to admit they literally lured a juvenile in to a life of crime to help
them make a big case. When their teen informant got in trouble, their response
was to let him twist in the wind rather than stand up and say ‘he was helping
us.’ It would be years before they tried to help Rick Wershe get out of prison.

They had their big case. What happened to the
impressionable and vulnerable teen they had led in to the criminal underworld
after that was his problem. They had new cases to crack.

Guys on the task force will tell you Rick Wershe provided
some key help early-on in the Curry investigation but his usefulness diminished
once the feds got court-authorized wiretaps and began recording Johnny Curry’s
phone calls.

Today Rick Wershe believes someone “high-up” got wind of
the use of a teenager as an undercover informant, and ordered a stop to it in
1986.

Either way, Rick Wershe was suddenly an undercover
used-to-be.

Young Rick Wershe had dropped out of school to live his
role as a secret federal informant. When his handlers quit talking to him, Rick
Wershe didn’t know what to do. His dysfunctional family wasn’t in a position to
help him try to become a normal teen. He decided to continue in the only life
he had known in his teen years. He decided to get in the illegal drug trade.

Not only was Wershe flirting with becoming a drug dealer,
he was stepping in to the political minefield of FBI pursuit of big city police
corruption. The Detroit teenager had no idea what he was getting in to.

Black politicians have long accused the mostly-white FBI
of targeting blacks who rise to positions of power—in politics and in crime,
which are often intertwined.

In this case the white-controlled FBI was targeting a
black drug gang with a leader—Johnny Curry—who was married to the niece of
Coleman Young—Detroit’s then-mayor who was one of the most politically powerful
blacks in America in that era. In the minds of more than a few Detroit blacks,
the Curry investigation was part of a relentless FBI campaign to get Coleman
Young, one way or another. In this case, it was through his niece’s
drug-dealing husband.

What’s more, the FBI was using a white kid to help them
bring down the Currys and perhaps get closer to nailing Coleman Young. No one
should be surprised by Rick Wershe’s long-standing belief that politically
powerful blacks in Detroit have exerted pressure on the Michigan Parole Board
to punish him—for life—for helping the detested FBI.

The Parole Board knows full well that Rick Wershe had
helped law enforcement bring down some big criminals. It’s in the official record
of Wershe’s ill-fated 2003 parole hearing. The fact the Parole Board has
released numerous inmates who did far worse than Rick Wershe ever did—admitted professional
killers, for example—lends credence to the idea that Richard J. Wershe, Jr. is
a political prisoner.

The Michigan Parole board has some explaining to do but
they won’t. No one holds them accountable. They do what they please with no
oversight, no responsibility to do justice.

If, for example, and this is a purely theoretical example
of course, a member of the Michigan Parole Board harangues the other members
with outright lies about a certain inmate and argues that inmate must never be
released, there is no mechanism in the law or administrative procedures to
challenge such a vendetta-monger. The Michigan Parole Board is under no
obligation to check facts and make decisions based on the truth. The case of
Richard J. Wershe, Jr. is a tragic example of that.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

A
young Detroit boy is killed when someone shoots up his uncle’s house where he
was watching television. The uncle tells the police a drug gang had threatened him
that same morning. The police ignore the lead and focus, instead, on
prosecuting an innocent man. The Detroit FBI knew the man was innocent. One of
their paid confidential informants told them what really happened. An FBI agent
nearly went to jail protecting the identity of the informant: Richard Wershe,
Jr., also known as White Boy Rick.

The summer of 1985 was frustrating for FBI Special Agent
Herman Groman. He knew who had killed a 13-year old Detroit boy named Damion
Lucas. He was the innocent victim of a bullet in an automatic weapons fusillade
by members of a drug gang angry at the boy’s uncle over money he owed them. The
shooters riddled the front of the uncle’s house with bullets. One of them
struck the 13-year old in the chest, killing him. He had been watching television
at his uncle’s house when the gunfire erupted.

The killers were members of the Johnny Curry drug crew—a politically
connected criminal enterprise on Detroit’s eastside. Johnny Curry was married
to the niece of Detroit’s powerful mayor, Coleman Young. After the fatal
shooting Curry was angry that his guys would do something so stupid—and he said
so in a telephone conversation that was recorded by the FBI in a
court-authorized wiretap. The FBI was leading a federal task force
investigation of the Curry group.

The FBI knew the Curry gang was responsible for the
murder, yet they had to watch helplessly as the Detroit Police persisted in
pursuing an innocent man for the killing. FBI agent Groman and his fellow agents
had to be careful how they handled what they knew about the Damion Lucas
murder. If the wiretap information was mishandled it could blow the
investigation.

The wiretap wasn’t the only source of information the FBI
had about the killing of the little boy. They had a paid Confidential Informant
(CI) who told them he was present for a meeting of the Curry gang where they
discussed how to handle themselves if Detroit Police homicide detectives
questioned them about the Damion Lucas murder. That informant was Richard J. Wershe, Jr.—White Boy Rick.

Groman, now retired, says since several Detroit police
officers were working as part of the drug task force, it was decided they would
discreetly pass the word through channels that the Curry gang was responsible
for the fatal shooting.

The cops on the federal task force passed the info along
but nothing happened. The Detroit Homicide Section never questioned the Curry
gang about the Damion Lucas murder.

They focused instead on an innocent man. LaKeas Davis
had had a noisy argument with the dead boy’s uncle a few days before the fatal
shooting. But the uncle, Leon Lucas, told the police he and Davis had patched
up their dispute.

Furthermore, Leon Lucas told investigators two of the Curry
gang had called him the morning of the shooting and warned him his house would
be shot up because he owed the gang money. Yet, the police avoided
interrogating Johnny Curry or any of his associates.

What’s more, the morning after the shooting, FBI
automated telephone surveillance equipment recorded calls from Johnny Curry’s
phone to two unlisted numbers for Detroit police officers. One call was to a
sergeant on the mayor’s security detail and a second, longer call was to the
private police headquarters line of Homicide Inspector Gil Hill.

Groman and his fellow agents put it all together and
concluded someone inside the Detroit Police Department may be involved in
obstruction of justice—a federal felony—in the handling of the Damion Lucas
murder investigation. They focused on Gil Hill who was the boss of the Homicide
Section.

The investigative possibilities were intriguing but none
of this helped LaKeas Davis who had been charged with murdering Damion Lucas. The
police insisted on prosecuting Davis even though they had strong leads
indicating the Curry group was responsible.

“I firmly believed he didn’t do it,” Groman recalls. The
FBI agent reached out to Elliott Margolis, the defense attorney for Davis.
Groman gave Margolis what is known in court as exculpatory information. That
means information that exonerates the defendant; information indicating Davis
didn’t kill Damion Lucas.

“I’m all about justice,” Groman says. “An innocent man
was being convicted of something he didn’t do. I wanted to make sure this was
rectified.”

Margolis did what he had to do. He told the judge
presiding over the Davis murder trial about the information from the FBI.
Margolis wanted the case dismissed. The prosecution was having none of it. It
didn’t take long for Groman to get a subpoena as a witness in the LaKeas Davis
murder trial.

Groman’s tip to the defense attorney focused on the FBI’s
informant information. Groman treaded lightly regarding the wiretap. The
existence of the active tap on Johnny Curry’s phone had to be protected. The
focus on the exculpatory information was centered on revelations from an FBI
confidential informant. Therefore the defense demanded that Groman reveal the
informant’s identity in court so he or she could be called as a witness. After
all, LaKeas Davis was on trial for murder.

“It was kind of a tightrope I had to walk and, of course,
I didn’t want to give up the identity of the informant,” Groman said.

It's true the FBI works to keep the identities of its Confidential Informants confidential. But there was another factor in this case. The Confidential Informant in the Curry investigation - a paid Confidential Informant - was a juvenile. Rick Wershe Jr. was a teenager.Even though Ken Walton, the retired former Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the Detroit FBI says there were no Bureau rules or regs about the use of juvenile informants at that time, Rick Wershe notes pointedly and with some bitterness the agents knew it wasn't right to use a kid to infiltrate a drug gang. That's why, Wershe argues today, they covered his work by putting it in his Dad's FBI informant file, since they had the same names differentiated only by Sr. and Jr., and that's why they had him use his Dad's code name - Gem - to receive periodic payments for his work on the Curry gang. In Rick Wershe's view there was, and to this day still is, some serious ass-covering going on at the Detroit FBI.When Groman appeared in court the judge directed him to
answer the questions about who the informant was. Groman refused to answer. The
judge threatened to send him to jail for contempt of court. A showdown was
brewing.

Groman was going to need his own lawyer to navigate this
sticky scenario. The local U.S. attorney’s office assigned an Assistant United
States Attorney (AUSA) to represent Groman and the FBI in the local murder
trial.

The morning Groman was due back in court he and a fellow
agent stopped at the federal courthouse to pick up the Assistant United States
Attorney assigned to represent Groman and the FBI in the local court case.

When the attorney got in the FBI car Groman tried to
sound cheery and optimistic. “I said, ‘Well, how ya doing? Are you all set? Are
you ready to defend me vigorously?’”

Groman remembers the federal attorney’s reply.

“’Well,’ she said, ‘I was thinking about that when I was
getting ready and so I brought you a present.’” She pulled out a new toothbrush
and handed it to Groman. “’I think you might need this,’” she said. The implication was that Groman was going to jail.

When they got to court the judge again ordered Groman to
answer the questions about the informant’s identity and any other exculpatory
evidence the FBI had about LaKeas Davis.

Groman again refused to answer but before he was sent to
jail it was agreed there would be a confidential—in camera—hearing in the judge’s
chambers. Away from the public courtroom Groman explained to the judge and the
attorneys the information the FBI had and the fact their informant had been
present for a Curry gang meeting on how to handle the murder investigation. He
also revealed the wiretap and the need to keep it secret for the sake of the
drug investigation which was being presented to a federal grand jury.

It was agreed that prosecutors in the LaKeas Davis case
would be allowed to question the FBI’s informant—by telephone from the FBI Detroit
office where, ironically, they could be sure the phones weren’t tapped. The
prosecutors would not be told the informant’s identity.

Rick Wershe doesn’t remember a lot about what happened
next. He recalls being driven one day to FBI headquarters in downtown Detroit and
taken to an office where he was put on a telephone and told to answers
questions about what he knew about the Damion Lucas case. The local case
prosecutors were on the other end of the line, in another office at the Detroit
FBI’s offices. Wershe’s identity was not revealed. At that time Wershe’s normal
manner of speech made it sound like he was a young black man even though he was white.

The charges against LaKeas Davis were dismissed. An
innocent man had spent several months in jail fighting for his life while
someone in authority in the Detroit Police Department kept the investigation
away from the real killers. The Damion Lucas murder never came back to court.
The police and prosecutors never pursued the tips that the Curry gang was
responsible for the murder.

“That case stuck in my craw because I knew we had
something going on here and it involved corruption within the police
department,” Groman says.

As the Curry drug investigation neared the point of a
federal grand jury indictment Groman was reassigned from the Detroit FBI drug
squad to the public corruption squad.

The unsolved Damion Lucas murder was always in the back
of his mind and several years later it was the catalyst for one of the biggest public
corruption cases the Detroit FBI ever had. It was a case that hinged on the
work of a Confidential Informant. That informant was Rick Wershe. More, a lot
more, about that case will be explored in a future blog post.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

One
reason Richard J. Wershe, Jr., better known publicly as White Boy Rick, remains in
prison doing a life term for drugs, seems to be a belief among some in Detroit’s
criminal justice system that Wershe was the FBI’s only source of information in
the highly controversial killing of a young boy by a Detroit drug gang with
political connections.

It’s
not true. Johnny Curry, the gang leader, was himself a source of information
for the FBI about the murder of Damion Lucas, both at the time of the murder
through things he said on a tapped telephone after the killing, and later in
prison when he was interviewed by agents.

Another
source was Kevin Colbert, a member of the Curry drug gang.

Readers of this blog know it has been slogging through
the details of the rise and fall of Richard Wershe, Jr.—AKA—White Boy Rick, mostly
in chronological order. Recent posts have focused on the 1985 murder of 13-year
old Damion Lucas, an accidental drug-gang killing that plays a critical role in
the shameful insistence of some on keeping Wershe in prison when others who did
far worse have been paroled.

This post continues the focus on the Damion Lucas killing
but jumps forward in time a bit to explore what a member of the Johnny Curry
drug gang told the FBI about the death of the young boy.

Kevin Colbert—known on the street as “Weasel”—was among
those indicted by a federal grand jury for his role in the Curry Brothers drug
organization on Detroit’s east side. Johnny Curry and two of his brothers ran a
dope dealing operation that had political connections. Curry was engaged to and
then married Cathy Volsan, the attractive niece of the late Coleman Young,
Detroit’s powerful mayor in that era.

Kevin Colbert was among those indicted in the federal case against the Curry drug gang.

The case never went to trial. Johnny Curry and his gang
pleaded guilty in exchange for shorter prison sentences. Such deals are known
in federal courts as a “Rule 11.” As part of the plea deal, the defendants admit
their guilt and submit to a debriefing by the FBI in which they detailed their
knowledge of various elements of the criminal enterprise. These debriefings often lead to new investigations.

FBI agent Gregg Schwarz, now retired, debriefed Kevin
Colbert. FBI investigative reports are known by their bureaucratic form number—302.
The 302 detailing Kevin Colbert’s debriefing includes his version of the Damion
Lucas murder. This blog quotes extensively from FBI 302s and other historic investigative file reports. One reason for that is much of the Rick Wershe story is old history and memories fade. The reports in the files were written at the time the events happened.

Schwarz, who believes Rick Wershe should have been
paroled long ago, thinks the Kevin Colbert Rule 11 debriefing is significant
because it shows White Boy Rick wasn’t the only one who gave information to the
FBI about the Damion Lucas murder.

The Damion Lucas case has never been solved. FBI agents
believe the investigation was deliberately thwarted to protect Johnny Curry,
and by extension, Cathy Volsan, the mayor’s niece. That is called obstruction
of justice and it is a felony.

The focus from the beginning has been on then-Inspector
Gil Hill, the head of the Detroit Homicide section at the time. Hill was
politically powerful, with connections far beyond his rank. For one thing, he
was a local celebrity thanks to his role as Eddie Murphy’s tough-talking cop
boss in the hit movie Beverly Hills Cop.

Detroit is a town starved for celebrities, so when it
gets one, the people cling to the star in their midst tenaciously and go to
great lengths to defend him or her. If someone criticizes their local hero,
many people take it personally. That translates in to political power.

When the Damion Lucas murder happened, Gil Hill was a
Detroit celebrity with political ambition. He retired from police work and ran
for the Detroit City Council. He won. Eventually he became council president.
He made an unsuccessful bid for mayor, too. Through it all, the FBI
investigation of his possible obstruction of justice in the Damion case dogged
Hill like a shadow, even after the statute of limitations for prosecuting him
passed.

Hill is retired now and reportedly in declining
health. Some say he partly blames Rick Wershe for losing the mayoral election due
to Wershe’s role in informing the FBI about the Curry gang involvement in the
Damion Lucas murder.

Still others speculate and theorize—and it’s important to
use those terms—that law enforcement/prosecution friends of Hill have a to-this-day vendetta against Richard Wershe Jr.
as a result of the FBI obstruction of justice investigation, which never
resulted in an indictment or charges. Hill is a black Detroit celebrity and some believe the mostly-white FBI was just trying to discredit another black hero.

Back to Kevin Colbert. FBI Special Agent Gregg Schwarz
questioned Colbert in November, 1987 regarding the Damion Lucas killing. Schwarz
recently told me he regarded Colbert as a hanger-on in the Curry organization. In
the FBI 302 of the Colbert Rule 11 debriefing, the former Curry gang member
said the dead boy’s uncle, Leon Lucas and a relative named Robert Walton
defrauded the Curry gang regarding prepaid lodging and entertainment charges
related to the group attending a Las Vegas prize fight between Detroit boxer
Tommy Hearns and Marvin Hagler in mid-April, 1985. Hagler won. Quoting the 1987 FBI
302:

“COLBERT stated it was
common knowledge that both JOHNNIE and LEO (Curry), as well as WYMAN JENKINS,
were extremely upset with LUCAS and WALTON.After their return to the Detroit metropolitan area, LEO CURRY told WYMAN
JENKINS to assign SIDNEY GOODWIN, also known as WACK, WALTER OWENS, also known
as WALDO, and KEVIN COLBERT, also known as WEASEL, to go to the home(s) of ROBERT
WALTON and LEON LUCAS with appropriate weapons and shoot the houses in an
attempt to display their displeasure with the actions of both WALTON and LUCAS.
COLBERT continued by stating it was WYMAN JENKINS and LEO CURRY who provided
MAC-10s and MAC-11s, as well as other weapons for the completion of this
incident.”

Colbert admits he was the
driver of the car that took the shooters to their destinations.

On the night of April 29,
1985, a car in the driveway of Robert Walton and the front of the home owned by
Leon Lucas were riddled with bullets from automatic weapons. One of the bullets
fired in to the Lucas house killed Damion Lucas, who was watching TV with his
younger brother.

Interestingly, Colbert
attributes the shooting of the Lucas home to Sidney Goodwin and Walter Owens. The
FBI investigation focused on Wyman Jenkins as one of the prime shooters and an
FBI wiretap of a Johnny Curry telephone call captured Curry talking about
Jenkins as a prime suspect.

Retired agent Schwarz says
in criminal investigations it’s common for different sources to say different
things. “They tell you what they think you want to hear,” is the way Schwarz
puts it.

To look at it another way, a criminal spilling his guts to fulfill a
federal Rule 11 plea agreement may tell you the truth, but it may not be all of
the truth. It may be slanted truth with emphasis here and de-emphasis there or an omission entirely.

Colbert told Schwarz after
the Curry gang realized Damion Lucas had been killed in the shooting spree they
held a meeting at Johnny Curry’s house on Whitehill Street in Detroit. Quoting
from the FBI 302 report again:

“COLBERT stated the
consensus of opinion was that all involved would have absolutely no comment
regarding the shooting incident and that silence should be the best policy.”

It never came to that. FBI
telephone pen registers, which preceded actual court-authorized listening via
wiretap, showed a call the morning after the Damion Lucas killing from Johnny Curry’s house to the unlisted home phone of
Detroit Police Sgt. James Harris, a member of the mayor’s security detail who
had responsibility for looking after the mayor’s family, including Cathy
Volsan.

The call from Curry’s house to
Harris’ house was immediately followed by a much longer call from the Curry
phone to an unlisted private phone at Detroit Police Headquarters which was in
the office of Homicide Inspector Gil Hill.

Leon Lucas and Robert Walton
both told homicide investigators they believed the Curry drug gang was
responsible for the fatal drive-by shooting.

After the call from Curry’s house
to Hill’s office, no one in the Curry organization was ever questioned by the
Detroit Police regarding the Damion Lucas murder.

The investigation focused, instead, on an innocent man who was charged
with the Damion Lucas murder. Charges against that man, LeKeas Davis, were
eventually dropped after a dramatic intervention by the FBI. Herman Groman, an
FBI agent on the Curry case, told Davis’ defense attorney that the Bureau had
informant information that it was the Curry gang, not LaKeas Davis, who killed
Damion Lucas. But Groman was determined not to reveal his source. He almost
went to jail as a result of protecting the informant’s identity.

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Richard Wershe, Jr. was an
important FBI Confidential Informant in the investigation of a major Detroit
drug organization, but it’s easy to overstate his role.His "White Boy Rick" reputation had more to do with
his age at the time—14—and his race—the only white guy in a black drug
crew—than his exploits in the drug underworld. To this day many people believe he knew
far more than he did. Here’s what Rick knew and didn’t know about an important
murder investigation.

Untold numbers of numbers of people around the world are
aware Detroit, Michigan was once known as the Motor City for the countless
automobiles built there, but in the post-1967 riot years it became known as the
Murder City. Year after year, starting in the 1970s, Detroit had more violent
deaths than Belfast, Ireland, Beirut, Lebanon or most of the world’s other
danger zones of that era.

Of the hundreds of murders in Detroit over the years, one
stands out as having significant impact on city politics. It is the April 29,
1985 drive-by shooting murder of 13-year old Damion Lucas. It can be argued
that the Damion Lucas murder is a key reason Richard J. Wershe, Jr. remains in
prison serving a life prison term, even though he had nothing to do with it
and, in fact, tried to help the FBI get justice for the dead boy. Some in Detroit's criminal "justice" system apparently believe this was the start of Wershe's long-running informant role on police corruption. And some, apparently, have done all they can to keep Wershe behind bars as punishment for telling on crooked cops.

It must be noted that Rick Wershe tried to help by passing along to an FBI agent what he heard in a
meeting of the Curry drug gang shortly after the boy was killed by mistake by members
of the organization. But Wershe didn’t know any more than what he overheard in
a conversation. At the time Wershe was a secret paid informant for the FBI
regarding the Curry organization. He had been recruited by the FBI because he
had good access to Johnny Curry, the leader of the group.

As Wershe told me recently in a phone call from prison,
he wasn’t in a position to ask questions about the Damion Lucas murder. That
would have been a red flag to the whole group.

The truth is, Rick Wershe’s
knowledge of the Damion Lucas homicide was important but minimal, at best. Many
people in the Detroit criminal justice system think he knows more than he does, and that has been a significant
problem for him in his efforts to get a parole. Some apparently fear he knows a
lot he hasn’t told. Wershe himself will be the first to tell you people think
he knows more about Detroit drug dealing and police corruption than he actually
knows.

The FBI had more than a tip from Rick Wershe about the Damion
Lucas homicide. They had a wiretap conversation of Johnny Curry telling a friend
that Wyman Jenkins, one of his top lieutenants, caused a lot of trouble by
shooting up the home where the little boy was watching television with his
younger brother. A bullet from an automatic weapon tore through the wall
and killed Damion Lucas: “S**t. He got ta weather
hisself outta this one, ‘cause they went and did a dumbass move by killing that
little boy. Man, that’s a little boy, s**t.”

The evidence shows the Detroit Police went to great
lengths to avoid prosecuting anyone in the Curry organization. The apparent reason
is the Curry gang was politically connected.

The police spent considerable time
trying to build a false case against an innocent man just to keep the spotlight
away from the Curry Brothers drug organization.

The trail of the thwarted investigation of the Damion
Lucas homicide led the FBI to Inspector Gilbert Hill, then head of the Detroit
Police Homicide section. Just prior to the start of the wiretap on Johnny Curry’s
phone the FBI had been mechanically recording a log of all calls to and from
Curry’s phone, showing the date, time and length of each call. The data was
captured by a device known as a pen register.

The morning after Damion Lucas was murdered, the pen
register log showed a brief call from Johnny Curry’s home phone to the unlisted home
phone of Detroit Police Sgt. James Harris, a member of then-Mayor Coleman Young’s
security detail. Harris was responsible for looking out for the mayor’s
relatives and that included Cathy Volsan, the mayor’s favorite niece, who was
the fiancé of Johnny Curry.

The Curry call to Harris was followed by a much longer
phone call to a private, unlisted telephone at Detroit Police Headquarters. The
phone was on the desk of Homicide Inspector Gil Hill.

What did Curry and Hill talk about? As luck would have
it, the FBI didn’t get court authorization to begin a full wiretap until a few
days later.

But Rick Wershe recalls riding around with Johnny Curry a few days after the murder when
Johnny received a call on his car phone—an unusual luxury accessory in 1985. Wershe
told me he could clearly hear both sides of the conversation. The caller,
Wershe says, was Detroit Police Inspector Gil Hill. Wershe says he remembers hearing Hill tell
Curry not to worry, because “I’ve got you covered,” or words to that effect.

This and other facts and recollections in previous posts
on Informant America might create the
impression that Richard Wershe, Jr. was a key player in the Curry drug
organization. That’s not true. He was a key hanger-on.

For whatever reason, Johnny Curry liked having this teenaged white kid who was
street-savvy and who spoke fluent ghetto Swahili hanging around. Curry would
take him to nightclubs favored by Detroit’s black gangsters, where Rick was an
obvious oddity—a fish out of water. But Wershe wasn’t an actual insider. Johnny
Curry was much too cautious for that.

What made Wershe unique in the Curry investigation was
his age. He began his role as an FBI confidential informant at age 14 simply
because he knew and was trusted by the Currys.

Retired FBI agent Herman Groman, who was one of the
investigators who worked with Wershe during the Curry investigation, says
Wershe provided key information at certain points, such as the tip about the
Damion Lucas murder, but in reality most of the federal case against the Curry
organization was gleaned from court-authorized wiretaps.

It is worth noting that Richard Wershe, Jr. was never
cited in the Curry Brothers federal grand jury indictment and he wasn't named as a witness. His role as an FBI informant didn't surface until several years later.

Wershe wasn’t the only one who told the FBI what happened the night Damion Lucas was murdered. Kevin Colbert, also known as "Weasel", a member of the Curry gang and one of those indicted, told the story of the Damion Lucas murder to FBI special agent Gregg Schwarz several years later. In other words, Richard Wershe, Jr. isn’t the only source about the case. Colbert’s story will be detailed in the next blog post.

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About Me

My name is Vince Wade. I am an independent/freelance investigative reporter, writer, narrator, multimedia producer and director.
I live near the beach in a city outside Los Angeles.
I started in radio news but I spent most of my career at network-affiliated TV stations in Detroit, Michigan where I covered crime, the courts, public corruption and various scandals. I’ve won over 20 awards including three Emmys, 1st Place for TV News documentary at the New York International Film Festival, plus wire service reporting awards and others.
I work on topics and projects that interest me and stories that need to be told.